This seems like a really bad idea. If people sacrifice karma in this fashion it will make them more invested in the proposition that the other person's ideas are just bad in general. Since they've given up something (somewhat) tangible in accordance with that standard cognitive biases such as reduction of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias could have very bad results.
Thanks for pointing this out. Would it make a difference if it were a temporary/reversible cancellation instead?
In the next month, the administrators of Less Wrong are going to sit down with a professional designer to tweak the site design. But before they do, now is your chance to make suggestions that will guide their redesign efforts.
How can we improve the Less Wrong user experience? What features aren’t working? What features don’t exist? What would you change about the layout, templates, images, navigation, comment nesting, post/comment editing, side-bars, RSS feeds, color schemes, etc? Do you have specific CSS or HTML changes you'd make to improve load time, SEO, or other valuable metrics?
The rules for this thread are:
BUT DON’T JUMP TO THE COMMENTS JUST YET: Take a few minutes to collect your thoughts and write down your own ideas before reading others’ suggestions. Less contamination = more unique ideas + better feature coverage!
Thanks for your help!